Deborah Meier is a visionary teacher, author, and founder of successful small schools in New York City and Boston. Harry Boyte, senior scholar at Augsburg College, is founder of the youth civic empowerment initiative Public Achievement and a leader in the movement to democratize higher education. This blog is no longer being updated.
School & District Management
Opinion
What Education Doesn't Know About Business
Pondiscio: A compliance mentality is far more evident in schools than in business. ... If we really ran schools like businesses you might find much to like about it.
School Choice & Charters
Opinion
We 'Choose' for Poor Children Every Day
Meier: You and I-or some other somebodies-are deciding the future of "other people's children" unless we provide ways for "them" to have a voice, a vote, and the resources to decide their own future.
Assessment
Opinion
Running the Wrong Race
Pondiscio: I resist the facile temptation to conflate testing with all that is wrong with American education. Testing did not destroy schooling. It revealed the rot and complacency within too many schools.
Assessment
Opinion
Thoughts From Detroit About Schools
Meier: Our schools are a symptom of something that affects all our institutions. It neither starts at school nor can end there.
Standards & Accountability
Opinion
Schools 'Where Everybody Knows Your Name'
Pondiscio: I would argue that the most important thing for educators to get right is school tone and culture.
Assessment
Opinion
When 'Pretty Good' Schools Aren't Enough
Meier: I believe the cards are so stacked against children in poverty and children of color that "pretty good" or "good enough for my own kids" will not make it for them.
School Choice & Charters
Opinion
Be Excellent at Simple
Pondiscio: I'm often baffled by our insistence on making the perfect the enemy of the good. My Democracy Prep colleague Lindsay Malanga and I often say we should start an organization called the Coalition of Pretty Good Schools.
Curriculum
Opinion
There Is No One Right Way
Meier: If half the effort and money spent on standardizing, aligning, testing, scripting over the last half-century had been spent on this kind of support, encouragement, and opportunity, we'd be in a very different and better place.
Standards & Accountability
Opinion
Making Teachers Guides to the World
Pondiscio: I object less to the principle of accountability than a sloppy, ill-defined, or unfair accountability system that encourages bad practice.
School & District Management
Opinion
Let's Talk More About Teaching
Meier: The difference between schools for the rich and poor was both how and what was taught.
College & Workforce Readiness
Opinion
If Not College, Then What?
Pondiscio: You don't like "college prep," but how do you feel about "work prep?" About independence prep?
School Choice & Charters
Opinion
Preparing Kids for More Than College
Meier: I personally hate the term "college prep." I want our students to be prepped for the real world, and I hope colleges do, too. On the whole, the thing that best helped us get kids into colleges were the kids themselves. They were unusually well prepared to carry on a conversation with adults in a thoughtful and lively way.
School Choice & Charters
Opinion
Pulling the Levers of Power
Pondiscio: None of these activities are as important as the message they send to the predominantly low-income kids of color we serve: your voice matters, and you have a duty to use it.
Standards & Accountability
Opinion
The Hidden Curriculum
Meier: What is obvious to me about the schools that work well is that the students and their families have overcome the "us" vs. "them" pattern.